Barbarian's Adventure in a Fantasy World-Chapter 344: The Descent of the Demon King (5)

“Champion?” Ketal tilted his head at the sudden word.

Kalosia’s voice flowed soft and even. “Yes. A Champion. Not the false kind who carries the Holy Sword as our vessel and wears a fragment of divinity like a mask, but a true Champion.”

“It sounds attractive when you say it like that,” Ketal replied, “but I do not know what it actually means.”

“Then I should give you the ground first,” Kalosia said. “God and Demon. Heaven and Hell. They were born at the same time.”

It happened when the first order settled over the newborn universe. The timing matched without even the error of a comma. The birth was perfectly synchronous. Their power matched as well. Neither side held superiority. Both stood in perfect balance. That was the origin of Heaven and Hell.

“But as you know,” they continued, “the number of gods is vast. At our height, we reached into the hundreds. Even now, there are comfortably more than dozens. Hell does not rival that on the side of the mighty.”

“I know this,” Ketal said.

There were many gods. The ones who had formed ties with him already approached two digits. Counting those he had not yet met, Kalosia’s estimate of dozens was not boast but a simple measure.

However, Hell was much simpler. There were only four Demon Lords. And there was the Demon King. Only those five could touch the realm of the gods. If one set aside Caliste, who had climbed to Demon Lord with nothing but the sword, the count of Hell’s great ones fell to four. In simple arithmetic, the gap looked absurd.

“Yet the power of god and demon is equal,” Kalosia said. “Neither side was born above the other.”

The implication was clear. The Demon King carried a force that, taken whole, outweighed the combined strength of many gods.

“You have seen this yourself,” Kalosia added.

Ketal nodded. The Demon King had faced five true gods without yielding. He had pressed them instead. He had forced them to retreat and then forced them to think. Measured even against the Primarchs, the Demon King did not fall behind. He was a creature who lived beside the word monstrous.

Kalosia’s tone turned rueful. “That is the root of the trouble. Heaven’s power is divided among many. Hell’s power is concentrated in him. A pack of foxes cannot bring down a lion.”

Even if several packs tore and clung until the lion toppled, half the foxes would die in the process. The cost would be savage. Worse, even with such cost, a sure kill was not guaranteed.

“Foxes will never be enough,” Kalosia said. “To hunt a lion, you need another lion.”

Everyone knew who they meant. Ketal stroked his chin.

“The theory has weight,” he said. “Unfortunately, he is stronger than I am. There is a way to bridge that, but it pays no attention to friend or foe. You would not find it helpful.”

“So there is a way... That is surprising,” Kalosia said, and a quiet laugh slipped out. They tipped their head. “As I said, become a Champion.”

Ketal’s eyes changed. “You mean to give me power?”

“Do you remember the last time I did?” Kalosia asked him.

“I remember.”

In Kalosia’s holy land, when Ketal fought the Demon of the Twisting Threads, he had been unable to handle the Myst. He had overwhelmed the demon in the exchange, yet could not finish the kill. He had told Kalosia not to watch but to act. Kalosia had listened and poured holy power into him. It had been brief, but the god’s authority had clearly nested inside his body.

“This time will be the same,” Kalosia said, “only stronger and deeper—and more importantly, not mine alone. The combined authority of the entire Hall of the Gods will be gathered into a single vessel.”

The power of the God of the Sword, the God of Lies and Deception, the Sun God, the Earth Goddess, the God of Strength, and countless others intertwined, forming a single current that flowed into Ketal.

“So that is why you call it a Champion.”

“You are strong by yourself,” Kalosia said. “If you also carried our authorities, you could reach the Demon King. That is my conclusion.”

Ketal rubbed his jaw and breathed a small sound of thought. “That puts a great weight on my shoulders.”

“I do not deny it,” Kalosia said. “It would be a heavy burden. This is my personal judgement. I have not yet asked the other gods. If you wish to refuse, you can refuse.”

To pass the duty of protecting the Mortal Realm to a being born in the Demon Realm was a confession of helplessness. Ketal could have struck Kalosia across the room and called it justice. The Abomination inside Ketal spoke first.

“You would throw a god’s responsibility on an outsider,” it said, dry with contempt. “You will not even carry your own oath. You are hardly worth the effort it takes to sneer.”

Kalosia did not bristle.

“You may say so,” they answered calmly. “In the end, it is his choice.”

They also held a quiet certainty that Ketal would not refuse.

“Why would I refuse?” Ketal said at once.

His eyes gleamed like a child who had been shown the inside of a legend.

To take the authorities of all gods and stand against the Demon King was a story gilded in legend, the shape of a myth given flesh. He would not let such a chance pass him by. Kalosia gave a quiet laugh, as though the outcome had never been in doubt.

“I thought you would answer that way,” they said. “Thank you. When this ends, whatever you ask, I will grant it. I swear it on my nature as the God of Lies and Deception.”

“You make it sound more like a lie that way,” Ketal replied.

To hear the God of Lies and Deception pledge on lies had the taste of a trick from the first bite. Kalosia understood and looked faintly put out.

“It can look that way,” they said. “It is still the truth.”

“It does not matter,” Ketal replied. He accepted the god’s proposal without a trace of hesitation. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

However, there was one problem.

“You said you have not asked the other gods,” he said. “I do not know how they will answer.”

“They will not refuse,” Kalosia said. “Not with so much at stake. Giving power to you will disgust some of them, but they will accept it.”

“In that case, we wait for your return,” Ketal said. “Is that all?”

“There is one thing to confirm first,” Kalosia said.

“Confirm?”

“Yes.” They turned their gaze fully on him. “I need to confirm who you really are.”

***

“To gather the authorities of all gods and pour them into a single vessel is the most rational way to face the Demon King,” Kalosia said. “But we couldn’t do it before in the past.”

The reason was simple: no vessel could endure such power. Each authority alone was enough to shake the world, and to bear several at once without breaking was a fantasy. Even among the gods, the strain would splinter the form that contained it. Mortals would fare no differently.

“Even the Sun God, who is called the strongest among us, would fail if they tried to hold one more authority than their own,” Kalosia said. “But what about you?”

Ketal held the Abomination within him and walked about as if nothing were there. More than that, no one outside could sense it unless they knew exactly where to look. It meant perfect control. It meant the boundary did what he told it to do.

“It seems possible, but I must check,” Kalosia said as they lifted a hand. “I will enter your body and look.”

To see how that inner space was arranged, to understand what lived there and how it endured, was the only way to know what weight Ketal could bear. He accepted the trial without hesitation, without a trace of resistance.

“Kain and Arkemis have already had a good look,” he said. “There is nothing to hide.”

“Then excuse me,” Kalosia said.

They touched Ketal’s chest. Ketal did not resist. Their awareness slid past skin as if skin were a thought, not a surface, and the world changed.

“So this is his inside,” Kalosia said.

They had wondered for a long time what soil had birthed Ketal and in what fire his form had been hardened. If he were only a barbarian of the White Snowfield, nothing could explain the strangeness that clung to him like a scent that refused to fade. Now, Kalosia was about to find out. They drifted within Ketal.

“It’s wide,” they said.

Ketal’s inside was wide. Kalosia was a god. Their mind was large enough to carry nations like stones in a pocket. Even so, the space held them easily and left room to spare. The container did not strain around its contents. It felt as if it were not a container at all.

“It seems there is no problem with me being here,” Kalosia said. “The Abomination is inside this place.”

They began to search, thinking to find the Abomination and measure the volume it occupied. If they knew that, they could judge how many authorities Ketal could accept without buckling.

However, Kalosia found nothing. No matter how far they went or how carefully they turned, the Abomination did not show. The being that had killed many, even gods, could not be seen.

“What...?” Kalosia whispered.

They pressed on. They kept pressing until the pressing itself began to feel like a mistake. Then, at the end of persistence, they came upon something.

“This is...,” they said.

Something existed in Ketal’s interior.

It was small. It did not take up space in any way that a god’s eye wanted to respect. It was like a single painting hung on one wall of a hall so large that the mind refused to trace the ceiling. Kalosia studied it, and their awareness locked. They had known its name. They had not recognized it by sight because the scale misled the eye. It was the Abomination.

The being that had slain many gods and burned worlds sat in front of them like a stroke of ink on a vast sheet of paper. They had not felt it because compared to the size of the room, it was too small to touch.

“So the reason I could not sense it was only this,” they said.

It was small, and that was all. Kalosia stood in astonishment. Even a being like the Abomination amounted to only that size in this place. In that instant, they understood something they had never wished to comprehend. Here, even they were nothing—no more than a sheet of paper suspended in an endless room. The Abomination, quiet until then, let a smile into its voice.

“You have seen it,” it said. “Child. Do you know who speaks with you now?”

“This is...,” Kalosia whispered.

It was not a matter of breadth or depth. The scale by which they measured meaning no longer applied. What stood before them was something wholly different.

The phrase people used for such difference was that the thing was on another plane. No matter how vast a world one painted upon a flat sheet of paper, it remained only a plane. From the perspective of space, it was nothing more than one among countless sheets stacked layer upon layer. The world within Ketal mirrored that order.

What was this? Kalosia thought.

Ketal was not human. He did not belong to the Mortal Realm, nor to Heaven, nor to Hell. He was not one of the Oldest Ones. He was something else altogether. For the first time in thousands of years, Kalosia felt fear—and understood that it was truly fear.

They tore themself away from Ketal’s body with a convulsion sharp enough to blur the room.

“You are back,” Ketal said. “Did you see everything? Will it work?”

He asked as if genuinely curious. On his face, he looked like an ordinary man who had lived an ordinary life in an ordinary town. That was the most disorienting part for Kalosia now that they had looked inside him.

“Where... did you come from?” they asked him, and their voice shook.